Now the show has published its traditional end-of-series phone-vote statistics, fans can finally see for themselves who the public would have voted out had the judges not stuck their oar in.

AKA "X Factor voting patterns: the truth!"

The X Factor voting, week by week

First up, Katie Waissel, who conspiracy theorists believed was saved by the judges time and again when a straight viewer vote would have shown her the door.

Waissel did indeed end up in the bottom two (or three) on five occasions, but if it had gone to deadlock, would she have exited stage left?

YES! In week one the judges saved her after a sing-off with FYD, when she had only 1.55% of the viewers' vote against 1.71% for FYD.

NO! Waissel was again saved by the judges in week four, but she also had 2.73% of the vote against Belle Amie's 2.56%. A deadlock would have made no difference.

YES! It was the biggest controversy of the series so far when judge Cheryl Cole refused to vote, a deadlock was avoided and Waissel went through. Had it gone to deadlock, Waissel would indeed have been gone, polling 3.22% of the vote against Treyc Cohen's 3.53%.

But by week eight it was all over for both Waissel and Wagner, who both departed in a double elimination.

Ah, yes, Wagner. So how many people voted for the hairy dog man? Answer: not many.

Despite various online campaigns to make him this year's winner, the bongo lover failed to score more than 10% of the vote until his very last week, and by then it was too late. So he was never particularly popular, but always popular enough (until week eight) to avoid the bottom two.

Other random stats: Matt Cardle topped the poll every week apart from the first, so Cowell could have saved everyone a lot of trouble (and front pages) by giving him the recording contract then.

The only time Waissel scored a double-digit share of the vote (16.82%) was in the Beatles-themed week seven. One more week, and it was all over.

Mary Byrne topped the first week's poll, and tended to get less popular with every passing week. This is also known as the "Steve Brookstein effect".